authoritarian – Inspirational Book Reviews

About this book

After reading Brave New World, I discovered Brave New World Revisited and after checking out a few reviews decided I needed to read it to understand Aldous Huxley’s thoughts about the world some 26 years after writing his original book. This is a relatively short book at 123 pages. I bought the paperback version from Thriftbooks, which has become my source for books during the past 5 months. The book is nicely bound and has a medium sized font making it easy to read. The quality of the pages are good and the book is 8″ high x 5 1/4″ wide, making it the ideal size to hold comfortably. I don’t recall what I paid for it, but it was less than $17 USD. The book has 12 chapters and most of them have only a few pages, which facilitates a book you can read a chapter and resume later. At the end of the book there is some pretty cool additions like About the Author, Some reviews and some of the authors own words about this book, a letter to George Orwell, and the complete Aldous Huxley bibliography.

Summary

There are so many interesting things about this book, but in my usual way I will try not to give you so much that its spoils your experience when reading the book. Remember, Brave New World was published in 1932 and Brave New World Revisited in 1958, so some 26 years had passed between the two books. Brave New World Revisited is a very philosophical look at the factors that exist or may exist that could make the dystopian society of Brave New World come true. One of the themes that Huxley mentions several times, is that he views the authoritarian regime of the future to be more like Brave New World than that of the brutal dictatorship of Orwell’s 1984.

I will outline a few of the factors that Huxley expounded on that could lead us to the authoritarian society:

Over-Population

At the time Huxley wrote Brave New World Revisited the population of the world was booming. He mentions that in 1931 when he was writing Brave New World the world’s population was a little less that 2 billion people and 27 years later it was 2.8 billion. People were beginning to live longer with new discoveries in agriculture and medicine were helping to spur on a larger population. His fear was that the population would get so large that the we could no longer support it with the resources we would have available. It was a valid assumption in 1958 and this theory was held by most people up until recent times, where we now are seeing declining birth rates. Huxley felt that over population to be one of the factors that would lead away from democracy to aristocracy. Remember at the time birth control pills were not yet available. Strangely enough he mentions that there would be 5.5 billion people by time his grand daughter was 50, so let’s say that was 2008. It turns out the world’s population in 2008 was about 6.7 billion.

Up until maybe the last 10 years or so, the fear of over population was a major concern, and still is in some parts of the world, but today we might not look at over population as a major driver of authoritarian regimes.

Quality of the Populace

One of the claims that Huxley makes is over the past few decades there has been an overall decline in IQ and health of the population. Some of this has been caused by advances in medicine, where in the past people may have died, but now were able to propagate their genes on to the next generation. His concern here also goes back to a declining death rates adding to overall population. If in fact IQ has been declining over the decades for various reasons, does this bode well for a flourishing democracy? This may sound confusing, but think about it as kind of an anti eugenics scenario brought about by a weaker gene pool surviving due to advances in medicine.

Over Organization

Under this title of over organization Huxley discusses his growing concern that technology would result in power being consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. His concern is that small business would be squeezed out by large multi-national corporations and wealth would belong to a few oligarchs that had near monopolies. Can you say Amazon, Tesla, Meta, Google? He wrote this around 1957 and it rings true today in 2025. These large, near monopolies have also created super organized companies. Huxley’s fear was this would create people that were more like robots and lacked creative thinking, and any appreciation for freedom, making them easy marks for authoritarianism.

Additional Drivers

In addition to the factors of over population, quality of the people, and over organization Huxley provides the details on how the would be autocrats use propaganda, salesmanship, brainwashing, and even chemical persuasion to stamp out democracy.

When you look at all the factors cited in Brave New World Revisited it is almost a playbook for the would be autocrat or dictator. One of the scary points that Huxley makes, is that we have a certain percentage of the population that is very responsive to outside suggestion. These people will make it almost impossible to support a democracy or even foster the environment for one to form. Now we look ahead from 1958 when Huxley provided his analysis and forecast for the future to today, in 2025. It appears that this relatively small slice of the population that is extremely suggestible has grown to be anywhere from 25-30% of the US population.

I usually avoid politics in most of my writing, but the Trump Administration and (MAGA) Make America Great Again movement is moving quickly down the authoritarian road. I can tell you that they haven’t read Brave New World as their methods are somewhat crude, often in your face, and are not very clever. This doesn’t fool the populace as much as it enrages it.

Recommendation

If you enjoyed reading Brave New World you will find it quite natural to read Brave New World Revisited. In the 26 or 27 years that passed between each of these books the world changed considerably, which gave Huxley some insight into what the future might hold. Aldous Huxley had an eerie sense of how the world would change in the future and as you read this book you will see just how spot on he was when you compare his forecasts to the world today. When you read Aldous Huxley’s books you are struck with just how intelligent he was. Truly an amazing individual, part story teller and part philosopher. I highly recommend Brave New World Revisited. Of course with the caveat that you read Brave New World first.

This won’t be the last book I review written by Aldous Huxley, so stay tuned.

About the Author

Wikipedia does a nice job providing information about the author. Here is snippet:

Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.

Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times,[9] and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley

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